Tobacco, History, and Memory: Storytelling and Cultural Grieving
in Eastern North Carolina

Eastern North Carolina Tobacco Landscape

In the summer of 1998, tobacco growers in eastern North Carolina waited anxiously
as state attorneys general negotiated a settlement with tobacco companies over
smoking-related healthcare expenses. Seemingly on the verge of a sea change,
farmers worried about the viability of their crop and wondered if housing developments
would soon sprout from their fields instead of tobacco. Meanwhile, contract workers
from Mexico, separated from family and homeplace, were now doing much of the
hard labor involved in tobacco cultivation. Exploring an agricultural community
in the midst of such a dramatic period of transition became the focus for interviews
and outreach conducted as
part of the Southern Oral History Program's "Listening for a Change" initiative.

The community where our historians listened for a change is at a crossroads
both literally and figuratively. On the border of Johnston and Harnett counties,
Bailey's Crossroads seems to be in the middle of nowhere - tobacco and sweet
potato fields, a couple of modest churches, a handful of houses. Yet like many
other rural communities in eastern North Carolina, Bailey's Crossroads finds
itself at the center of national and international policy debates about immigration,
the tobacco industry, the decline of small family farms, and the globalization
of corporate agriculture. In their interviews with farmers, farm workers, clergy,
teachers, and other local residents, SOHP historians documented changes in
how farmers have cultivated, harvested, cured, and sold tobacco during the past
four decades. In the process, they also explored changes in tobacco culture and
politics, as well as the transformation of work, family, and community life.

The focal point for our interviews turned out to be Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Bailey's Crossroads, where Rev. Warren Bock, the church's pastor
for the last fifteen years, has been extremely active in farm labor and other
rural issues. As part of the community outreach component of "Listening
for a Change," We taught a Sunday school class at Ebenezer in the
fall of 1999 during which tobacco farmers discussed the impact of the changing
economy on their church community. In February 1999, we led a forum that suggested
oral history's potential for helping members of tobacco communities come to terms
with such change. The program was held at a museum in the Pitt County town of
Farmville, where college students and townspeople crowded into the room to listen
as we conducted life history interviews with three tobacco farmers.

The Southern Oral History Program
Center for the Study of the American South
Love House and Hutchins Forum
410 East Franklin St., CB# 9127, UNC-CH
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
(919) 962-0455info@sohp.org